ere were a number of men firing
from a distance of hardly more than forty paces, and not one took
effect.

The next moment the whole crowd were upon them. Buttons snatched Mr.
Figgs's razor from his grasp and used it vigorously. Dick plied his
bowie-knife. The Senator wielded a clubbed rifle on high as though
it were a wand, and dealt the blows of a giant upon the heads of his
assailants. All the Italians were physically their inferiors--small,
puny men. Mr. Figgs made a wild dash at the first man he saw and
seized his rifle. The fight was spirited.

The rascally brigands were nearly three times as numerous, but the
Americans surpassed them in bodily strength and spirit.

Crash--crash--fell the Senator's rifle, and down went two men. His
strength was enormous--absorbed as it had been from the granite
cliffs of the old Granite State. Two brawny fellows seized him from
behind. A thrust of his elbow laid one low. Buttons slashed the wrist
of the other. A fellow threw himself on Buttons. Dick's bowie-knife
laid open his arm and thigh. The next moment Dick went down beneath
the blows of several Italians. But Buttons rushed with his razor to
rescue Dick. Three men glared at him with uplifted weapons. Down
came the Senator's clubbed rifle like an avalanche, sweeping
their weapons over the cliff. They turned simultaneously on the
Senator, and grasped him in a threefold embrace. Buttons's razor
again drank blood. Two turned upon him. Bang! went the Doctor's
pistol, sending one of them shrieking to the ground. Bang! Once
more, and a fellow who had nearly overpowered the breathless Figgs
staggered back. Dick was writhing on the ground beneath the weight
of a dead man and a fellow who was trying to suffocate him. Buttons
was being throttled by three others who held him powerless, his
razor being broken. A crack on Mr. Figgs's head laid him low. The
Doctor stood off at a little distance hastily reloading.

The Senator alone was free; but six fierce fellows assailed him. It
was now as in the old Homeric days, when the heroic soul, sustained
by iron nerve and mighty muscle, came out particularly strong in the
hour of conflict.

The Senator's form towered up like one of his own granite cliffs in
the storm--as rugged, as unconquerable. His blood was up! The same
blood it was that coursed through the veins of Cromwell's grim old
"Ironsides," and afterward animated those sturdy backwoods-men who
had planted themselves in American f